The current situation with the global financial markets is not pretty. Even here in Baltimore today, Constellation Energy, a Fortune 100 company, has been sold to a company out of Iowa. We can only hope this all resolves itself in time and that we all learn something in the process.
As marketers, I think we have to learn something from this as well. I’ve always been a huge advocate of honest marketing. I think consumers are as a whole a pretty smart group, and it’s never advantagous to try to get one over on them because it always ends up coming to light. An example just reared its ugly head with the situation insurance giant AIG finds itself in. It was recently announced that in order to keep the company alive, the government is going to loan it $85 billion. Without this money, it would surely fold.
The company’s tagline and core positioning, you ask? ”The Strength To Be There”
Ironic, huh? Even though they were enduring what had to have been months, perhaps years, of financial strife, they still hung their hat on the fact that they provided strength. According to Ad Age, the corporation has pulled all of its corporate advertising throughout the end of the year at least. Good idea, because their positioning doesn’t hold up. The company, clearly, is far from strong. So now what? AIG, with their new money, will live on and continue to do business, but they can hardly continue to tout strength. I think it will be hard for the company to recover from this.
Garret Ohm
http://www.orange-element.com
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Very similiar to my post on Washington Mutual: http://www.brandidentityguru.com/wordpress/2008/09/branding-tidbits-washington-mutual-whoo-hoo/